Rachel Maddow does an amazing job of laying out the various Right Wing conspiracy theories and how Benghazi fits right in with them.

I swear NOBODY does a better job with this kind of thing than Rachel Maddow.

Her research abilities and ability to lay the facts out so that they are easy to understand and absorb is second to none.

Essentially her point, and one that has been made here and other places as well, is that the Republican party is like a mental hospital where the inmates have now taken over the facility. And in my opinion, the GOP either needs to regain control, or burn the place down and start all over.

Some of the media is talking about this and going after Hillary Clinton which is the intent of Issa, etc. - as to her running in 2016.

Republicans are absolutely the worst as to spreading and doing untruths. I'm so thankful this group is in the minority. They still cannot get over the fact that President Obama was elected a second time (by a large margin over Romney!). They just cannot admit they lost! So, they obstruct, trying to make things harder for Hillary Clinton whom they know will beat their asses in 2016!!!

So, I guess today's BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI hearing is over... did anything, y'know, decisive actually come of it, or was the proverbial whistle full of cotton? I risked looking at the Fox news site, and it all seems rather vague.

So I guess there's a verdict in the Jody Arias case that CNN covers 24/7 and a press conference at 5 in Cleveland about the kidnappings. Flip over to FOX: John McCain and Benghazi. Even the crawl was Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi...

Jody Arias might actually have more substance than Benghazi at this point.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney met with House Republicans on Thursday morning, suggesting they may need to subpoena former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to get more answers on the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya.

"I think Hillary [Clinton] should be subpoenaed if necessary," Cheney said during the gathering, according to Fox News.

Since the Benghazi attack, Republicans have been hammering the Obama administration and arguing that Clinton and her inner circle engaged in a "cover-up" of what really happened. On Wednesday, they held a nearly six-hour-long hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the matter.

When asked by a reporter about Cheney's subpoena suggestion Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) replied, "I have confidence in our committees and our chairman to continue to pursue this. I'll let them make the decisions about what those next steps are. ... There's going to be more hearings and more information."

How about a subpoena for Dick Cheney? for Donald Rumsfeld? for Condi Rice? for George W. Bush? Their crimes against nation and the world are genuine but no one will go near them. The worst that has happened is that they were all completely bypassed at the last two national Republican conventions.Beaglemom

The only really interesting thing as far as I know is that the State Department was sending emails day-of labeling it a terrorist attack, which they released today, and that the decision to press hard on the video angle at first was pretty much all Rice.

Beyond that it's pretty much just Hicks going "WELL I TOTALLY COULD HAVE GOTTEN SOME SOLDIERS THERE IN AN HOUR" and a terrible game of he-said she-said. What mystifies me is that this is happening three years before an actual election because it's clear that while it might be a fuckup, it's the sort that just sometimes happens and no specific person is to blame. It's also the sort of thing that, with a little time to prepare for, can totally be spun around because all of the other options are kind of shit. The group of special soldiers they were possibly going to send in was a magnificent total of four people, into a group of what could have been (as far as anyone knew at the time) as many as 60 enemy combatants. Sending in gunships would have been a terrible idea because nobody knew where the ambassador actually was after people broke in, and beyond those two options there wasn't anything available quick enough. Not to mention the whole "sending a large military force into another sovereign country" thing.

It's the sort of info that could be devastating without time to prepare statements for, but could be easily turned around into "what the fuck would you have done, person who knows jack shit?" and leave Rubio/Ryan/Cruz standing there blubbering about special forces. I'm not sure why this is happening now, unless the GOP has drunk the kool-aid enough that they genuinely think this will actually result in Obama getting impeached.

Anonymous @ 10:58-I agree with that assessment of Ms. Maddow completely. Her analysis of the events of Sept. 11, 2001 was totally wrong, and in support of the unsupportable official conspiracy theory. To 11:16, do some of your own research, and you may find out what may have happened that day. But certainly it was not jet fuel that brought down those buildings, particularly when WTC 7 was not hit by any plane. And if anyone can produce any photos of a large jetliner crashed at the Pentagon that day, I would like to see them.

And Darlene is correct; we have been programmed to avoid trying to figure out what really happened the day that changed everything. Maddow is totally wrong on this, as are many "left-wing gatekeepers" like the Nation, Huffington Post, Mother Jones, Noam Chomsky, Matt Taibbi, and countless others. Check out Architects and Engineers for Nine Eleven Truth for starters, or David Ray Griffin's books.

"... the Republican party is like a mental hospital where the inmates have now taken over the facility..."

is close, but I think it would be more accurate to say that the inmates are being cranked-up and turned loose from the asylum by corporate masters that are as dark and evil as any Batman villain. (think Koch, et. al.)

Do you think "Batman villain" is a little over the top?Really?Have you seen the pictures of Dick Cheney in the black hat and wheelchair at Barack Obama's first inauguration?

I think the most interesting (and terrifying) aspect of our Pres. O's eight years is the slide into total, slathering madness by "rill Murikan" Cons, who will never be able to handle the fact that the "bluh" man (as per Rick "Oops" Perry) was elected TWICE. I know there was the usual petty garbage going on during the Clinton years, but nothing this tantrum throwin' insane.

I look forward to the national run on Thorazine and strait jackets when Hillary is elected!

The mainstream media didn’t find Wednesday’s Benghazi hearing quite as “explosive” as Fox News predicted they would be. So today, Megyn Kelly and her guest, conservative Media Research Council VP Dan Gainor looked into why so many media outlets appeared to dismiss the testimony as nothing new.

Kelly showed Gainor some headlines from outlets like the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today and others that she felt didn’t take the hearing quite as seriously as they should have. “If you look at, sort of across the mainstream media, it was a collective yawn in response to yesterday’s Benghazi coverage.”

Gainor said “this is a continuation” of the media’s “policy to minimize a scandal that makes Hillary Clinton look really bad,” essentially an effort to protect her before she runs for president in 2016. “The media have always loved Hillary.”

Like Greg Gutfeld said on Fox’s The Five last night, though with less colorful language, Kelly admonished the media’s decision to spend more time covering the Cleveland kidnapping case and the Jodi Arias murder trial than they did covering the hearing. She also suggested that the media is using the same tactics with its Benghazi coverage that Bill Clinton used to handle his extra-marital affairs: “dismiss the accusation as old news, attack the messenger, try to discredit the person leveling the accusation, cover up inconvenient truths.”

Another example of media bias on the Benghazi issue that got under Kelly skin was a tweet sent out by the Washington Post that claimed only “rich, middle-aged men and Chick-fil-A lovers” were using the #Benghazi hash tag. Kelly said when someone first told her about it, she thought, “there is no way this really happened,” and is now shocked that the Post hasn’t apologized.

“Does any of this matter?” Kelly asked. “If the the Washington Post, if The New York Times, if the LA Times, if the San Francisco Chronicle were reporting this in a way that didn’t dismiss these whistleblowers’ sworn testimony as a ‘yarn’ and ‘nothing to see here,’ would it make a difference with the American public?”

Gainor said it absolutely does matter, because all the media has to do is say the Benghazi aftermath was a product of “confusion” or “incompetence” rather than a “cover-up,” and “then you repeat it endlessly and the American public will believe it.”

And if Megan had done her homework, she would have read the STATISTICS that were noted related to the Tweet, instead of AGAIN going all into outrage and ridiculous shock about the WP tweet. They have NOTHING to apologize for but FOX has TONS to apologize for with their outright lies and misrepresentations. They are SO nervous about Hillary that they just make stuff up to try to smear her.

And by the way, 'the media LOVES Hillary'? Since when? Hillary has taken a beating in the media for DECADES, so that is just more bullshit emanating from her show.

Gryphen, are you suggesting that the patriotic members of the conservative tea party loyal opposition GOPoop are completely batshit insane for simply asking the president - the possibly foreign-born islamo-fascist, anti-American NEGRO president - to confess that he conspired with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to order the execution of the 4 Americans at the Benghazi compound AND that he may very possibly have been among the attackers wearing a disguise and traditional arab garb?

Can't you see these shameless douchebags just want the truth? The truth and President Obama's impeachment/resignation, that is!

Conservative Republican propagandists worked in an orchestrated fashion yesterday to paint a Benghazi narrative for the media that Hillary Clinton is a Very Bad Cover Up Artist.

NBC’s First Read

'Key parts of the conservative movement are turning their attention from President Obama to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “I find it stunning that four and a half months after the attack, Secretary Clinton still has the gall to say it wasn’t us,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said at yesterday’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. Added Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): “Tell me, who is Cheryl Mills?… She is the fixture for the secretary of state; she is as close as you can get to Secretary Clinton.” In addition, for the first time since Feb. 2008 (when Obama overtook Hillary in the Democratic presidential contest), Republican groups inundated our inboxes with emails about Clinton. The GOP oppo organization American Rising: “Benghazi Hearing Raises Serious Questions About Clinton.” The Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads: “Hicks told Clinton at 2am it was terrorism.” Here was Citizens United’s David Bossie (who was behind the “Hillary: The Movie”): “The Need For A Select Committee Is More Evident Than Ever.” And Drudge’s front page for most of yesterday looked like a time warp to when the Clintons were the constant focus of conservative attacks.'

Okay, so the usual posse of GOP propagandists are suddenly and pointedly trying to make Benghazi into something that will hurt Clinton. That should get the alarm bells ringing.

The media often fails to look at the overarching, pattern even when it’s a repeat, as this one is. But First Read does acknowledge the years of Clinton attacks. They acknowledge that Republicans shifted their focus from Obama to Clinton for political reasons, en masse, and clearly pre-orchestrated, but there is not a peep about Republicans defunding state security. Maybe that is because Democrats aren’t engaging in an orchestrated propaganda-steeped campaign to awaken the media to facts.

KILMEADE: [A]nyone who says this is politically driven, or it’s against the president, that’s out the window. Because if there’s a non-political season in this world in American politics, it’s now. The mid-terms aren’t close –

STEVE DOOCY [co-host]: Sure.

KILMEADE: And the president is not running. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 5/7/13, via Media Matters]

Yes, Kilmeade, that’s right, because it wouldn’t be about 2016. And the sudden shift that was obvious days ago to Hillary Clinton in light of her excellent poll numbers doesn’t mean a thing. It’s not like Republicans are desperate to get something to smear Hillary with since none of their other smears worked. That’s 15 plus years of dedication to smearing Hillary down the drain if they can’t make Benghazi stick before she runs in 2016.

She's scaring the holy shit out of them, isn't she? They really see her as indomitable and so they have to try to bury her before she even announces, but their efforts are premature and downright stupid.

So, we have Republican activists as lawyers for the alleged “witnesses”. We have Fox News doing their part to light the runway to the “right” opinion given the fallacious choices presented, and we have GOP operatives and dirty money pushing the narrative to the media in a coordinated attack. The Republican’s Benghazi Dreams just jumped the shark.

The Republicans know how to play to the media’s dumbed down version of lazy truth telling: Report what both sides say, find truth in both so you appear unbiased, and declare DC a mess. In the meantime, the Republicans’ exceptionally partisan, political agenda is being activated at warp speed, and no one ever asks them why they can’t compete based on ideas — why they spend all of their energy drumming up accusations against their opponents instead of coming up with a few good ideas to present the American people.

In case you were wondering when the media is going to wise up to Republican witch hunts as the little boys who cried wolf one too many times, the answer is no time soon. The Benghazi witch hunt is obviously politically motivated, and if that were ever in doubt, the mass email campaign by the GOP propagandists put the last doubt to rest. The loud and obvious denials at Fox are just the cherry on top.

I'm a big fan of Rachel's. This one was one of the best compilations of the dead horse the "Denizens of Bullshit Mountain" (h/t To Jon Stewart) have been, are, and will be beating, I suppose through the next Clinton Presidency.

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This blog is dedicated to finding the truth, exposing the lies, and holding our politicians and leaders accountable when they fall far short of the promises that they have made to both my fellow Alaskans and the American people.